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The Time America Almost Stopped Climate Change | Climate Town

Climate Town2 HN recommenders · 2021–2023
638K views · commentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2021-01-21

Climate Town tells the history of the period when the greenhouse effect was not politically controversial and the US came close to acting on climate. It covers Exxon's early climate science and the policy failures that followed.

HN recommends it as an entertaining summary of early bipartisan climate action and corporate influence on research.

Climate policy, solutions & debateClimate science & climate change

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5 comments from Hacker News

@erdo2021 · in “How I debate”

When do you consider the left to have moved on climate? Climate change was a fairly bi-partisan issue initially. George Bush is famous for pushing cap and trade ideas in the late 80s early 90s for instance ClimateTown has a fairly entertaining video about it [VIDEO]

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@danuker2022 · in “In defense of cryptocurrency”

So what? If the pollution is the problem, government should tax the externalities through a Pigovian tax. In the EU we have a functioning carbon cap, and as such mining is less profitable here. [LINK] But the US will hear none of it: [VIDEO]

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@asmor2023 · in “'Devastating' melt of Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets found”

We got surprisingly close, so close that Exxon had a division on renewable energy in the 80s (but then decided to spend that money on lobbying and disinformation instead). Climate Town has a great video essay on it: [VIDEO]

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@hju22_-32023 · in “Sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky is moving from science fiction to reality”

While I'm not saying this whitepaper is wrong, keep in mind that this is done by Carbon Engineering who receive funding from people and organizations like N. Murray Edwards[1], Chevron Corporation, Occidental Petroleum and BHP[2] which either have hands deep in the oil or mining market, among other things. There is financial incentive to provide results that are in-line with what your funders want, and it's nothing new that this kind of thing has been, and still is being done. It's just hard to prove often. So as with all science, consult multiple whitepapers, including ones that don't have direct or borderline not indirect funding from those who have financial incentive to get a result that increases revenue or similar, to get a clearer idea of the probability that the topic isn't incorrect or what have you. As an aside, whether it's right or wrong (since it's a heated topic), I feel these videos demonstrate at least the possibility of companies playing with these kinds of things. They're amusing to watch, if nothing else, in my opinion: [VIDEO] and [LINK] [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK]

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@asmor2023 · in “Shell Using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to Convince Kids Fossil Fuels Are Cool”

By the late 70s wasn't a secret, it's more that nobody would listen over the sound of oil prices crashing half a decade later. Exxon even briefly had a substantial research division into renewables. In the 80s! YouTube channel Climate Town has a very good summary of history of early climate chance action, The Time America Almost Stopped Climate Change [VIDEO]

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